Under the Dome

Julia was still snapping. Barbie shifted to the edge of;he road. From his new position he could see a bivouac tent beyond the trucks. Also what might have been a small mess tent, plus a parking area filled with more trucks. The Marines were building a camp here, and probably bigger ones where Routes 119 and 117 left town. That suggested permanence. His heart sank.

'Is the newspaper woman there?' Cox asked.

'She's here. Taking pictures. And sir, full disclosure, whatever you tell me, I tell her. I'm on this side now.'

Julia stopped what she was doing long enough to flash Barbie a smile.

'Understood, Captain.'

'Sir, calling me that earns you no points.'

'All right, just Barbie. Is that better?'

'Yes, sir.'

'As to how much the lady decides to publish… for the sake of the people in that little town of yours, I hope she's got sense enough to pick and choose.'

'My guess is she does.'

'And if she e-mails pictures to anyone on the outside—one of the newsmagazines or the New York Times, for instance—vou may find your Internet goes the way of your landlines.'

'Sir, that's some dirty sh—'

'The decision would be made above my pay grade. I'm just saying.'

Barbie sighed. 'I'll tell her.'

'Tell me what?'Julia asked.

'That if you try to transmit those pictures, they may taxe it out on the town by shutting down Internet access.'

Julia made a hand gesture Barbie did not ordinarily associate with pretty Republican ladies. He returned his attention to the phone.

'How much can you tell me?'

'Everything I know,' Cox said.

'Thank you, sir.' Although Barbie doubted Cox would actually spill everything. The Army never told everything it knew. Or thought it knew.

'We're calling it the Dome,' Cox said, 'but it's not a Dome. At least, we don't think it is. We think it's a capsule whose edges conform exactly to the borders of the town. And I do mean exactly.'

'Do you know how high it goes?'

'It appears to top out at forty-seven thousand and change. We don't know if the top is flat or rounded. At least not yet.'

Barbie said nothing. He was flabbergasted.

'^.s to how deep… who knows. All we can say now is more than a hundred feet. That's the current depth of an excavation we're making on the border between Chester's Mill and the unincorporated township to the north.'

'TR-90.' To Barbie's ears, his voice sounded dull and listless.

'Whatever. We started in a gravel pit that was already dug down to forty feet or so. I've seen spectrographic images that blow my mind. Long sheets of metamorphic rock that have been sheared in two. There's no gap, but you can see a shift where the northern part of the sheet dropped a little. We've checked seismographic reports from the Portland meteorological station, and bingo. There was a bump at eleven forty-four A.M. Two point one on the Richter. So that's when it happened.'

'Great,' Barbie said. He supposed he was being sarcastic, but he was too amazed and perplexed to be sure.

'None of this is conclusive, but it's persuasive. Of course the exploring has just started, but right now it does look as if the thing is down as well as up. And if it goes up five miles…'

'How do you know that? Radar?'

'Negative, this thing doesn't show on radar. There's no way of telling it's there until you hit it, or until you're so close you can't stop The human toll when the thing went up was remarkably low, but you've got one hell of a bird-kill around the edges. Inside and outside.'

'I know. I've seen them.'Julia was done with her pictures now. She was standing next to him, listening to Barbie's end of the conversation. 'So how do you know how high it is? Lasers?'

'No, they also shoot right through. We've been using missiles with dummy warheads.We've been flying F-15A sorties out of Bangor sine; four this afternoon. Surprised you didn't hear them.'

'I might have heard something,' Barbie said. 'But my mind was occupied with other things.' Like the airplane. And the pulp-truck. The dead people out on Route 1.17. Part of the remarkably low human toll.

'They kept bouncing off… and then, at: forty-seven thousand plus, just zippity-zoom, up, up and away. Between you and me, I'm surprised we didn't lose any of those fighter-jocks.'

'Have you actually overflown it yet?'

'Less than two hours ago. Mission successful.'

'Who did it, Colonel?'

'We don't know.'

'Was it us? Is this an experiment that went wrong? Or. God help us, some kind of test? You owe me the truth. You owe this town the truth. These people are goddam terrified.'

'Understood. But it wasn't us.'

'Would you know if it was?'

Cox hesitated. When he next spoke, his voice was lower. 'We have good sources in my department. When they fart in ttie NSA, we hear it. The same is true about Group Nine at Langley and a couple of other little deals you never heard of.'